


Void Antonym

by lindsay_007



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Probably no romance but we'll see, WIP, post season 3B
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 00:57:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1246702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsay_007/pseuds/lindsay_007
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A hole, once dug, isn't so easily refilled. What, exactly, is the opposite of a Void? </p><p>Post Season 3B, after the Nogitsune is exorcised from Stiles, the pack tries to pick of the pieces of their strained relationships. Just as things are looking up, Stiles discovers there may be lasting consequences to being possessed.  </p><p>There's a chill in the air...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Void Antonym

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written a series in a long, long time, and I think it's going to be hard for me to get back in that groove. Still, I thought maybe at least posting this first piece and gauging the reaction, I could be inspired to write more. Just wanted to be clear about that upfront. Un-betaed. Sorry for errors. Thanks for reading.  
> ( Look me up on Tumblr, I'm Cameralinz)

There was an interesting tool used in modern forensics known as ground penetrating radar, a technology that enables investigators to see beneath the surface of the earth. Often, this means buried bodies can be found underground years after their deaths, simply by showing where disturbances occur in the natural soil patterns. 

Essentially, we could now locate places where holes had been dug, even after being filled in. 

Stiles wondered what would happen if they had something like radar penetration for the soul. Or the mind, or the heart, or whatever squishy place a person’s essential being was supposed to reside. It was two months after his bloody, painful, and bloody painful exorcism of The Void, the Nogitsune sized hole that drilled into him so completely, people he knew and loved as friends considered killing him, just to stop the damage his possessor was inflicting on Beacon Hills. 

They’d looked for other methods, of course. Between Scott, Lydia, Derek, and his own father, no one had been able to make an attempt on his life. Not that there hadn’t been close calls. The Argents almost had him, which Stiles tried to respect. Kira sided with her mother (who turned out to be more than met the eye, like her daughter) which he understood, as he’d trust his father’s instincts over a practical stranger’s any day. Still, it got messy. Lines were drawn, and some things were said that couldn’t be taken back lightly. All his friends walked around eggshells with each other after their latest brush with darkness. 

In the end, the only thing to take the Nogitsune down had been his own sheer force of will. Ancient knowledge helped, of course. Always good to stumble upon something like that to guide in the right direction. Deaton’s magic, or whatever it was that he did, helped a little as well. 

But, in the end, it was Stiles versus the Vendetta Void, and…

Well, he’d won. 

“Stiles?” 

He jerked out of his thoughts, back to the reality of history class and good old high school life. He turned to Scott and forced a smile. 

“Sorry, zoned out, man.” 

Scott’s face was blank, but Stiles knew the look well these days. He was trying not to seem concerned, but Scott had honest eyes, ands Stiles could see a hint of trepidation behind them at the moment. Anytime he drifted into daydreams, or was lost in his own memories, it lacked the innocence of other normal people. Scott, more than most everyone, besides his dad maybe, had been traumatized by the possession, and the fear that maybe he actually would have to kill his best friend. Also, their shared fear that Stiles was suffering from his mother’s illness -- another Nogitsune trick, as he’d been found healthy after the exorcism -- meant that his momentary lapses from reality triggered fears their worst struggle yet wasn’t as over as they hoped. 

Holes, once dug, aren’t so easily filled -- they leave scars in the earth. 

“Did you hear me, about my Mom?”

Stiles shook his head. “No, sorry.” 

“She’s going out tonight. Did you want to stay over and watch movies or something?” 

He thought about it. Not much homework, and doing something normal sounded perfect. Just him, and Scott, and some crappy Netflix movies, and…

“Oh, and the others might come by, too.” Scott said quickly, reeking of casualness, opening up his history textbook to fake an interest in the Civil War that Stiles knew Scott lacked. 

The Others. Meaning, their friends, who had all somehow become other from each other, because of him, the void. 

“What?” 

Scott didn’t look up from the textbook. “Oh, Isaac, you know? And Lydia might show up if she’s not busy, and Allison, and Kira…You know. Just to hang out.” 

Stiles was stunned. These people had all agreed to share the same air as one another for the first time in weeks? 

“Are you kidding?” 

With a sigh, his friend closed his book, turning to look at him with red ears -- Scott knew he’d failed at attempting this wasn’t a big deal. 

“No,” he said, voice quavering just a little. “What’s the problem?” 

Stiles laughed, short and dark. “Just like that? No big deal, water under the bridge? Hey, we all nearly died again, and this time it got uglier than normal, but lets be friends again?” 

Scott shook his head. “We never stopped being friends. None of us. We’ve just temporarily stopped trying.” 

“Scott --”

“Stiles, come on. I’m just...I’m tired. That...that thing cracked a pretty strong group of people, and I just want us put back together.” 

A feeling of being dunked in ice overwhelmed him when Scott acknowledged the possession, but he refocused. “There’s no way. It’s too soon. Allison and Lydia won’t even look at each other when they pass in the hall --”

“It’s just movies, Stiles. Maybe no one will even show up. I just...I wanted to do something.” 

Scott McCall, peacemaker. Something in the universe gave him fangs and claws, the power to land crushing blows and fight to the death -- and his real weapon was the hope in his heart. If their friends were ever going to get back on the same wavelength, impossible as it seemed to him, Scott McCall was the only person who would manage it. Stiles couldn’t look into the open, optimistic face of his friend and also dismiss him. 

He wanted to say, “That’s never going to work and you know it,” but it came out a little like “I’ll be there, with popcorn,” instead. 

Scott smiled, somehow equal parts smug and endearing, and Stiles thought maybe some McCall hope had rubbed off on him.

\-- 

They all showed up. Impossibly, impossibly, they all did. Starving for one another, but shy like strangers, the others arrived at Scott’s house just as he said they would. Isaac was first, as he never really stopped crashing at Scott’s place, but seemed to disappear whenever Stiles came over. He’d been torn between loyalty for Scott and the whatever-it-was that was happening between him and Allison, struggling to pick a side, especially after Stiles -- no, the Nogitsune -- had caused him personal injury. But, there he was, sprawled on the floor of Scott’s living room between the couches, watching The Avengers with them. 

Lydia arrived later, bouncing in like nothing was wrong, a well practiced mechanism she’d honed over years of being the social butterfly of Beacon Hills -- snacks included. Then, Kira arrived, and she and Scott spoke on the porch alone outside for a while before she too came in, and sat next to Scott. Allison was last, and the air had tensed a little when she arrived -- she had more complicated dynamics with almost everyone in the room. Irony of ironies, Stiles was the person she had the least amount of issues with, considering they’d never dated, or had Scott romantic territory issues, like her and Kira, or were best friends on the outs, like her and Allison. Just, you know, Evil versus Hunter issues. 

“Hey guys,” she said timidly, and everyone chirped a greeting back. They all sounded so small, childlike. They were children, Stiles thought briefly. Or, not far from it. Amazing. 

Allison scanned the room for a place to sit -- not on the floor with Isaac, or on the same couch as Scott and Kira, and Lydia had claimed the lazyboy like her own personal throne. She sat down next to Stiles, and took his hand to hold. He gave a quick squeeze, accepting an apology she was offering, but would never expect or ask from her. 

Water under the bridge, dirt back in the hole. Maybe the void hadn’t just been inside his heart, mind, soul, but with their odd little unit, too. 

By the time the Avengers first started working as a team, Stiles smiled at Scott, their very own superhero. He might have saved their world, after all. 

\-- 

Kira offered to buy pizza, so they paused the movie to linger in the kitchen and lay claim to the cheesy goodness when it arrived. She and Allison were a little awkward around each other, but respectful, and Kira explained the backstory of all the Avengers to Lydia, who had only seen the Batman movies, as Jackson preferred them. 

“But Robert Downey, Jr…” Lydia grinned. “I’m a fan.” 

“Oh yeah,” Kira nodded, and the girls hissed laughter and nods of approval, eliciting a groan from the guys. 

“Come on, no one compares to him,” Scott whined at Kira. “He has set up unrealistic standards for men everywhere…” Everyone laughed then, and the guys left the girls to their loud descriptions of Downey’s beauty. When they turned the movie back on, Kira returned to the living room, but Lydia and Allison lingered in the kitchen, talking in low voices, probably bandaging their broken friendship. 

Stiles was tempted to listen in out of sheer nosiness, that investigatory inclination of his that never seemed to take a night off, always wanting to collect information even when it wasn’t his to have. Curiosity and cats, he reminded himself, and decided to leave them to their private moment. He thought the sound of his own voice would be distraction enough. 

“How long is your mom supposed to be gone for?” He asked Scott. 

Scott shrugged, eyes locked on the screen as Loki and Thor snarked at each other. 

“Not sure.” 

Stiles scrunched his nose. “Is she working?” 

“Uh, I don’t know. She just said she’d be out tonight.” 

That sounded odd, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. Then, Agent Coulson got attacked by Loki, and he focused on the movie again. 

He should have remembered this movie better. They’d seen it before, but the thing about living in a town full of werewolves and kitsune and banshees was that you got a bit behind on pop culture, unable to fit in fiction with actual disasters on your plate. It was funnier than he remembered. Stiles marveled at how well the night was going, up until Hawkeye had to come in and throw him for a loop. Hawkeye had a line that Stiles had all but forgotten, and it shook him up when he said it. 

“Do you know what it's like to be unmade?” 

And yes, he did. And, yes, it was just a stupid line in a stupid movie about stupid superheroes, but it sucked the air out of his lungs. Stiles felt like the pizza was made of solid concrete inside his stomach. He rose from the couch, mumbled something about needing more soda, and slipped out of the living room. The girls in the kitchen didn’t notice when he passed them, to the front door, out onto the porch. 

Stiles grabbed a beam to steady himself, leaning his head against it, the wood grain prickling his forehead. Things didn’t have to be easy. That was impossible, Stiles knew that. But, damn it, could at least the little stuff stop bothering him? Everything had been great… Why couldn’t it just stay that way? 

The air was chilly, his breath lingering in the air in little puffs of fog. Stiles focused on it, his pounding heartbeat coming back down from its perch between his ears. 

A breath in, and a breath out…

It hadn’t been this cold earlier, he mused, wishing he was wearing long sleeves. A cold front must have moved through. 

The rhythm of his breaths was accompanied suddenly but the sound of crackling. Stiles snapped into focus, too aware that things were out there, in the darkness, to simply brush off a strange noise. His eyes focused on the lawn just outside the porch, noticing a small puddle of water that had formed from the rainstorm they’d had the night before. 

The crackling was ice, spreading across the puddle, the water snapping so quickly from liquid to solid that it was a bright white, glinting in the light of the moon. Stiles stepped down off the porch, not believing his eyes, and ran his hand across the puddle, his hand coming back slick and tingling from the cold. 

His shivering intensified, and not just from the frosty air filling his lungs as he began to panic.

Was this real? Did he want it to be real? 

This wasn’t natural, Stiles knew that, and that had a 90% chance of meaning it was bad news, but what if it was all in his head, and the Nogitsune had committed the worst trick of all -- only pretending to be gone all this time, lulling him into a false sense of security...Hibernating…

Stiles backed away from the ice, turned to go back in the house to find a witness, someone else to see what he was seeing, to make sure he wasn’t out of his mind again. But, when he stood, he realized he was no longer alone. 

A woman there in the lawn, just a few feet away -- well, barely a woman, not much older than Derek, Stiles guessed -- dark hair, dark eyes, so pale she seemed illuminated…was illuminated, actually, a glow that rested at the nape of her neck, her eyes haunting and hollow -- and Stiles recognized her, instantly, wouldn’t have been able to forget the image for the rest of his life, of her half body...

Laura Hale, now unbroken, undead, and close enough he could touch her -- but Stiles had lost all feeling in his body at the sight, no energy to even scream for help. 

Her mouth opened, and hung limply for a moment, before she finally spoke. “We need guiding…”

“What?” Stiles couldn’t believe he could even form words, much less speak them.

“We’ll help, but we need guiding,” said Laura, or her ghost, or whatever she was, her words coming to him in triplicate, layered and unnatural. 

“Help?” 

“Soon, we’ll help.” 

Stiles shook his head, not understanding, not grasping how this was possible, what Derek Hale’s dead sister was doing on Scott’s lawn, why she was talking to him, why when she spoke he wasn’t sure she was really speaking, or if he was just hearing her in his head, his pounding head, his racing heart frozen like the air, panic, panic, cold sweat and panic... 

Then, Laura dissolved back into the darkness she’d sprung from. 

More startled by her disappearance than her arrival, Stiles let out a strangled cry. 

“Wait!” 

The desperate plea didn’t even fog with his breath. The icy air had abandoned the night.


End file.
